All Forum Posts by: Ryan Thomson

@Chris Lopez I'm interested. I'm down here hustling in COS. :)

@Greg M. I agree with the others. All of those are areas where people will want to live. And I think most areas in the Springs you will be able to find young professionals to rent to. They are moving here in mass. 

I think the most important thing for you to find is the right house. Does it have options to cashflow while you live there? And if you want to scale to another house hack the next year, does it have a good exit plan that will also make cashflow possible?

I've done three house hacks myself in the last 2 years and helped clients do the same. Buying a house with options is important to your success.  

@Hossam Elaskalani @Miller McSwain here are some more great resources: 

House Hacking episodes on Bigger Pockets Podcast: #352, #252, #350, and #249. 

Also, Craig Curelop's book on House Hacking is a great resource.

@Hossam Elaskalani I wish I was thinking like you when I graduated. It took me several years to get to that mindset. 

Since I have though, I have purchased three house hacks in the last two years. The first one was 4 bedrooms and a garage conversion. I rented out the rooms to friends and Airbnb'd the garage. I lived for free and made $1700 above the mortgage. 

I repeated the same process the next year. The airbnb rules changed so I can't airbnb the current garage, but it's really nice and next to UCCS so I rent it for $1500 a month and the 4 rooms for $600 a month ($2400) for a total of $3900/month.

Now I live in a duplex and airbnb the bottom unit. It pays my mortgage and then some. 

All that to say if you are willing to hustle a little bit, be creative, cash flow is very possible in Colorado Springs. Although I will say, I'm probably approaching my limit of what I can manage on my own and how much I can scale with this strategy. But it has offered a lot of financial freedom with a couple years of hard work. 

@Shai Flax Here are some criteria I look for in a SFH house hack: an easy way to split into multiple units, a walk out basement, an ADU, a garage I could convert, or lots of bedrooms.

@Austin Haynes the best thing I've done is declare all my rental income on my tax returns. This allows me to use that rental income to effectively zero out my mortgage debt and use my w-2 income to qualify for the next home in a year. 

For resources I really like the following House Hacking episodes on Bigger Pockets Podcast: #352, #252, #350, and #249. Also, Craig Curelop's book on House Hacking is a great resource.

@Benjamin Hewitt and @Randy Bloch Great answers. How does one find a fee based CFP that is not incentivized to tell me to put my money in a fund his company manages? 

@Bruce Horner could avoid the 20% downpayment by making it a vacation home on airbnb and putting down 10% as a vacation rental loan. 

@Dionne Rodriguez You should only have to put 3.5%-5% down on FHA if you refinance the first one. However, you may want to refinance the first one as an investment property or you may have trouble getting the owner occupant loan for the second one.

Could also go conventional loan at 5% for the second one. Unless you are going to buy a multifamily, the FHA is not much more valuable than a conventional (maybe worse). 1.5% less in downpayment, PMI for the life of the loan, higher interest rate, stricter closing requirements, some sellers see the FHA loan as less of a qualified buyer (making it a challenge in a competitive market). If you are going multifamily being able to put down 3.5% for a duplex instead of 15% is a huge advantage of FHA though.

Love it! 

My first house hack: House Hack with an airbnb. SFH with 4 bedrooms. Live in one. Rent the other three. Converted one of the garages into a studio kitchenette apartment by using a 20K personal loan. The airbnb nets me $1450 every month and the bedrooms rent for $1800 total. On a $1550 mortgage I am grossing $3250 on rent every month.